1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of calendaring and scheduling systems and, more particularly, to arranging meetings and supplemental meeting services through the calendaring system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Colleagues often experience a need to work with one another in a cooperative fashion despite, for one reason or another, not being able to work together in person. Modern technologies such as teleconferencing and electronic meetings make such interactions possible. Teleconferencing, as is well known in the art, allows several persons to participate in a telephone conversation from two or more different locations. Electronic meeting applications such as Lotus Sametime™, available from International Business Machines Corporation of Armonk, N.Y., permit persons to view common images as if each person was located at the same location and viewing the same display.
The advent of multi-party calendaring systems, such as Lotus Notes™ which also is available from International Business Machines Corporation, facilitates the scheduling of multi-party meetings by determining whether prospective meeting participants are available at designated times, by sending invitations to join meetings to designated recipients, as well as scheduling an agreed upon meeting time, meeting duration, and date within each participant's individual calendar. While some calendaring systems attempt to provide functionality beyond time management and multi-party scheduling, these conventional calendaring systems have been unable to tightly integrate functionality relating to supplemental meeting services including, but not limited to, provisioning a teleconference line, canceling a reserved teleconference line, or arranging an electronic meeting space.
Presently, when scheduling a teleconference, conventional calendaring systems allow a meeting owner to automatically generate a one-time teleconference phone number to be used in conjunction with the meeting. In such cases, the meeting owner typically is a registered user of a third party teleconference system. Accordingly, scheduling the meeting via the calendaring system also initiates the scheduling of the teleconference with the teleconference system. Any charges for establishing and using the teleconference number, or call-in number, are routed to the meeting owner or to another entity to be billed such as the department or business entity in which the meeting owner works.
Still, for a calendaring system to schedule a meeting and a teleconference with an automatically generated teleconference number, conventional calendaring systems must be communicatively linked with the teleconference system. Otherwise, the calendaring system will not schedule the meeting as a “teleconference”. Rather, the calendaring system will inform the meeting owner that the teleconferencing service is currently unavailable and ask the meeting owner to try again at a later time.
In consequence, the owner may choose to schedule the meeting via the calendaring system without the teleconference number. In that case, the meeting owner must continue to contact the teleconference system manually, outside of the calendaring system environment, in an effort to obtain a teleconference number. If the teleconference system does become available and a teleconference is successfully scheduled, the meeting owner must generate a meeting notification manually which specifies the teleconference details and then distribute the notification to the participants via the calendaring system. If, however, the teleconference system does not become available, the meeting owner can manually generate and send a cancellation notice to the other participants.
In the event that a meeting owner wishes to cancel a previously scheduled meeting and teleconference through the calendaring system, the teleconference system also must be available to the calendaring system for purposes of notification. If not, the calendaring system may cancel the meeting, but the scheduled teleconference will not be cancelled as the teleconference system is not available. In that case, the calendaring system informs the meeting owner that the teleconference system is not available and asks the meeting owner to try to cancel the scheduled teleconference at a later time. Thus, the meeting owner is forced to continually try to cancel the meeting in a manual fashion outside of the calendaring system environment until the teleconference system does become available. Typically, if the teleconference is not cancelled within a predetermined time before the scheduled teleconference time, the meeting owner likely will be charged for the establishment of the teleconference even though no teleconference took place.
If electronic meeting software is to be used in conjunction with a scheduled meeting, such arrangements typically must be performed independently of the calendaring system. That is, the meeting owner must schedule the electronic meeting with the electronic meeting system, obtain confirmation from the electronic meeting system, and, through the calendaring system, manually generate and send a notification to each participant indicating that an associated electronic meeting has been scheduled. The instructions for participating in the electronic meeting also must be provided.
The lack of integration between conventional calendaring systems and supplemental meeting systems such as teleconference systems and electronic meeting systems, forces meeting owners to expend significant time arranging meetings, leading to increased costs. In addition to the costs associated with meeting arrangements, meeting owners often incur additional expenses resulting from last minute cancellations.